Article Abraham Trembley's Strategy of Generosity and the Scope of Celebrity in the Mid-Eighteenth Century RATCLIFF, Marc Abstract Historians of science have long believed that Abraham Trembley's celebrity and impact were attributable chiefly to the incredible regenerative phenomena demonstrated by the polyp, which he discovered in 1744, and to the new experimental method he devised to investigate them. This essay shows that experimental method alone cannot account for Trembley's success and influence; nor are the marvels of the polyp sufficient to explain its scientific and cultural impact. Experimental method was but one element in a new conception of the laboratory that called for both experimental and para-experimental skills whose public availability depended on a new style of communication. The strategy of generosity that led Trembley to dispatch polyps everywhere enabled experimental naturalist laboratories to spread throughout Europe, and the free circulation of living objects for scientific research led practitioners to establish an experimental field distinct from mechanical physics. Scholars reacted to the marvels of the polyp by strengthening the boundaries between the public and academic spheres and, in consequence, opened a space for [...] Reference RATCLIFF, Marc. Abraham Trembley's Strategy of Generosity and the Scope of Celebrity in the Mid-Eighteenth Century. Isis, 2004, vol. 95, no. 4, p. 555-575 Available at: http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:37207 Disclaimer: layout of this document may differ from the published version. 1 / 1 Abraham Trembley’s Strategy of Generosity and the Scope of Celebrity in the Mid-Eighteenth Century By Marc J. Ratcliff* ABSTRACT Historians of science have long believed that Abraham Trembley’s celebrity and impact were attributable chiefly to the incredible regenerative phenomena demonstrated by the polyp, which he discovered in 1744, and to the new experimental method he devised to investigate them. This essay shows that experimental method alone cannot account for Trembley’s success and influence; nor are the marvels of the polyp sufficient to explain its scientific and cultural impact. Experimental method was but one element in a new conception of the laboratory that called for both experimental and para-experimental skills whose public availability depended on a new style of communication. The strategy of generosity that led Trembley to dispatch polyps everywhere enabled experimental natu- ralist laboratories to spread throughout Europe, and the free circulation of living objects for scientific research led practitioners to establish an experimental field distinct from mechanical physics. Scholars reacted to the marvels of the polyp by strengthening the boundaries between the public and academic spheres and, in consequence, opened a space for new standards in both scientific work and the production of celebrity. comme l’Auteur de l’Histoire des Polypes, il a passe´ de plein vol a` l’immortalite´. —Julien Offrey de La Mettrie (1751) * Institut d’Histoire de la Me´decine et de la Sante´, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, CP 1211 CH, Geneva 4, Switzerland. I wish to acknowledge Janet Browne, Bill Bynum, Denys de Caprona, Jacalyn Duffin, Bernardino Fantini, Maria Teresa Monti, Titti Pennuto, Simon Schaffer, and Mary Terrall for their help, advice, insights, and editing of earlier versions of this essay. I have also benefited from discussions with several colleagues from the Max Planck Institut fu¨r Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin, the Wellcome Trust Center for the History and Under- standing of Medicine in London, and the Institut d’Histoire de la Me´decine et de la Sante´ in Geneva. I am grateful to the Royal Society in London, the Archives de l’Acade´mie des Sciences in Paris, the Bibliothe`que Publique et Universitaire in Geneva, and Jacques Trembley of Geneva for allowing me to quote from manuscript sources in their collections. All the illustrations are reproduced courtesy of the Bibliothe`que Publique et Univ- ersitaire, Geneva. Isis, 2004, 95:555–575 ᭧ 2004 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved. 0021-1753/2004/9504-0001$10.00 555 556 TREMBLEY’S STRATEGY OF GENEROSITY ISTORIANS OF SCIENCE have rightly connected Abraham Trembley’s celebrity with H his discovery of the regeneration of the polyp (Hydra), elaborated in his Me´moires, pour servir a` l’histoire d’un genre de polypes d’eau douce, a` bras en forme de cornes (1744). Born in the Geneva Republic, the son of an officer, Trembley (1710–1784) was educated in theology and philosophy and defended his thesis on the infinitesimal calculus in 1731. In 1732, for economic reasons, he migrated to Holland, and in 1736 he became the tutor of Count William Bentinck’s two sons. He started his experiments on the polyp in the castle of Sorgvliet in the summer of 1740. After becoming famous thanks to this research, he was named to the British diplomatic delegation that negotiated the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, putting an end to the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748. He then traveled in Europe as tutor to the son of Charles Lennox, second duke of Richmond, before returning to Geneva in 1756. Trembley married in 1757; from that time on he dedicated himself to the education of his children, to political activity, and to the writing of books that combined educational, moral, and scientific topics.1 Historical accounts of Trembley’s discovery have underscored his extraordinary skills in investigating regeneration; notably, his experimental method has been scrutinized in the seminal studies of John Baker, Marino Buscaglia, Sylvia Lenhoff and Howard Lenhoff, and Virginia P. Dawson. Some historians have even asserted that his celebrity and influence were due chiefly to his mastery of experimental method, and for this reason they credit him with being the father of biology.2 In this essay I will show that Trembley’s experimental method, brilliant though it was, was neither the only nor even the main reason for his meteoric success and influence on his contemporaries. First, given the regularity of the regeneration phenomenon in the polyp and Trembley’s inspired method for demonstrating it, I claim that a major factor in his success was his strategy of communication, which I will label the “strategy of generosity.” Moreover, Trembley’s management of the polyp was much as concerned with para-experimental features—the conservation, care, and transport of polyps—as with experimental method. Implementing the strategy of gener- osity led to major changes in naturalists’ practices within the laboratory; these changes— which were not only, strictly speaking, experimental—radically transformed the standards operating in the field of experimental natural history. Another commonplace that circulates among historians is that the marvelous regenera- tive phenomena the polyp demonstrated were a direct source for the sorts of materialist and vitalist ideas that surfaced during the 1740s. I claim that this is only part of the story. 1 The epigraph is taken from Julien Offray de La Mettrie, L’homme machine, in Oeuvres Philosophiques, 2 vols., Vol. 1 (1751; Paris: Fayard, 1987), pp. 63–118, on p. 77. For a comprehensive biography of Trembley see John R. Baker, Abraham Trembley of Geneva, Scientist and Philosopher (1710–1784) (London: Arnold, 1952). 2 See J. R. Baker, Abraham Trembley, pp. 170–187; Marino Buscaglia, “The Rhetoric of Proof and Persuasion Utilized by Abraham Trembley,” in From Trembley’s Polyps to New Directions in Research on Hydra, ed. Howard M. Lenhoff and Paul Tardent (Archives des Sciences, 1985, 38[3]), pp. 305–319; Sylvia G. Lenhoff and H. M. Lenhoff, Hydra and the Birth of Experimental Biology, 1744 (Pacific Grove, Calif.: Boxwood, 1986), pp. 14, 20 (this provides synthetic charts of the discoveries and procedures); Virginia P. Dawson, “Trembley’s Experiment of Turning the Polyp Inside Out and the Influence of Dutch Science,” in From Trembley’s Polyps to New Direc- tions in Research on the Hydra, ed. H. M. Lenhoff and Tardent, pp. 321–334; and Dawson, Nature’s Enigma: The Problem of the Polyp in the Letters of Bonnet, Trembley, and Re´aumur (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1987) (hereafter cited as Dawson, Nature’s Enigma), pp. 86–88, 183–184. Trembley is referred to as the father of biology in S. G. Lenhoff and H. M. Lenhoff, Hydra, p. 16; see also Joseph Schiller, “Queries, Answers, and Unsolved Problems in Eighteenth-Century Biology,” History of Science, 1974, 12:184–199, on p. 185. MARC J. RATCLIFF 557 One cultural outcome of the interest in polyps was a strengthening of the divide between the public and the scholarly spheres—at least in France. Confronted with the marvelous polyp, the scholarly world distanced itself from—and indeed protected itself against—the public enthusiasm for metaphysical discourse. Within the scholarly setting, however, the polyp had considerable influence both on the rules for the communication of the scholar’s image and reputation and in shaping a new discipline for experimental naturalists. Far from creating biology as a discipline, a development that occurred a century later, Trembley gave something of its new shape to the modern laboratory, a locus that synthesized ex- perimental and para-experimental practices.3 And indeed, from 1750 onward, a web of laboratories sprang up in Europe, networked by the circulation of papers, letters, instru- ments, and organisms. A MODEL FOR SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION: THE SPREAD OF THE POLYP AND THE CONVERSION OF UNBELIEVERS Circulating Polyps An ongoing problem during the seventeenth century was the transport of small and mi- croscopic living animals. Methods used for conveying larger animals—living, dead, or stuffed for display—had been improved from the Renaissance onward. Quadrupeds— dead and alive—were routinely brought from America, Africa, and Asia, intended for museums and zoological gardens. Nonetheless, transporting dead animals overseas con- tinued to present particular problems of conservation: they were subject to decay and to being gnawed and eaten by other creatures.